Due to jetlag you wake up and an hour of the morning or never even sleep. I was probably up at 4am and thanks to "Sleepin", these Japanese sleeping pills, I was able to sleep at least until 4am. Akira and Masami live in Hyogo prefecture in Takarazua city, a little outside Osaka. And they live up a for real steep hill that would take at least 10 minutes of hard climbing. Luckily we never had to walk up it because they were driving or we took a taxi. Here we are marching down to the train.

for some reason there's a statue of Florence Nightingale in the small town they live in.

picked up bentos at a department store in Kyoto Station

I want this tanuki guy so bad. His magical scrotum is so big he can drink out of it

the side route up to Kiyomizu Dera. One thing I don't remember is the crush of Chinese tourists and how you might think you're looking at a Japanese girl in a kimono and then they turn around and you can tell they are Chinese and that they are wearing a shabby quality rental kimono. People from all countries are guilty of this, it's just that there are so many chinese tourists that they get most of my ire. There was an incident between China and Korea where China wasn't happy with Korea's THAAD missile defense system so travel between the countries was shut down so all the chinese tourists went to Japan instead (although they say there is always a crush of Chinese tourists so it just made it that much worse).

they seriously cut back the trees here so now these Jizo are in sunlight all the time and the moss that was part of why they looked so cool has died.

sannen zaka street.

Yasaka Koshin Do temple is one you may or may not stumble upon and it's an under appreciated small one for sure because there were almost no (foreign) tourists in this cherry blossom crush of tourists. The main feature here is the Kukuri zaru (monkey) that has his hands and feet tied to repress your desires

it was almost all Japanese girls here for some reason.

they had no english literature out but I remembered from last time that I saw one so I asked and she pulled one out from under her desk. Basically it looks like the tied up monkey represents one of your desires which you hang up at the temple so you can achieve stuff that your desire was preventing. Sounds very Japanese

an even crazier example of Japanese craftsmanship and attention to detail. Before i posted wood, but here it's stone that's been meticulously cut to fit around these rocks.

meandered down to Maruyama koen, one of my fav places. And alas the weather and timing did not work out so we did not get to do yozakura (night cherry blossom viewing) whilst drinking beer and eating under the atmospheric lights of this place, which has been on my mind for like 8 years. There's always next time.....

The older you get the less audacious and classier your kimono gets. This photo is a great example of young and old.

The Bad B squad. I'm liking how gangster her overcoat looks.

had macha at some place in the old school looking part of Gion.

Bar Linto was recommended by someone and its a good example of a Japanese whiskey bar. It had a $10 door charge so it's that's kind of atmosphere

on our way to Osaka to meet buddies

It's Kyle Stecker the illustrator. Yes he is alive and doing well in Kyoto.

We met their friends, one of them was Mika, an alto saxophone player who had a movie made about her or her jazz highschool (lost in translation). And the dude is her buddy and the bar owner.

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More about me

I was on an adventure around the world that ended up being 5 years. I lived 1.5 yrs in Beijing from June '08, 1.5 yrs in Tokyo from Sept '09, Barcelona for 3 months in summer '11, 5 months in London from August '11, NYC for 3 months, 2 month Asia trip, NYC for summer 2012, 1 year in Paris until Fall '13 (I got an artist's visa!), and now live in back in NYC. I am a freelance Illustrator working for magazines, newspapers, advertising, publishing, etc...www.JasonRaish.com